If you happen to be in Hania, you can find the fountain, take the road by the Starbucks and follow it past Tamam, up some stairs and on the right you will find Margarita's shop.
Margarita is a Greek-Australian woman of medium height and dark blond hair. She has one of those inviting smiles that makes you like her instantly, and she is an amazing artist, or writer of icons. If you ask her, she will tell you everything there is to know about icons, and you won't be bored for a second!
Margarita makes all of her icons from completely natural materials. The paint, for instance, is minerals mixed with egg yolk (or egg tempera for you artist geeks out there). It takes about a month to prepare the wood for painting.
We spent a delightful morning and a good part of the afternoon chatting with her in her shop, drinking coffee and raki, and petting her cat (who really liked Veronica and kept jumping on her lap). Raki is an excellent Grecian liquor that is also used for tacking the gold leaf on icons! Talk about ingenuity.
We bid Margarita and Bella (the cat) goodbye and headed to Tamam for a delish lunch of fried cold with a garlic puree sauce. Just as we were finishing our meal, the waiter came up to us and gave us dessert "on the house."
The people of Crete are some of the friendliest people I have met on my travels. Granted, we were some of the only tourists in town and so could enjoy personal time with the locals.
A few more examples, we stepped into a shop to look around and ended up buying olive wood things. The lady offered us some raki (probably hoping we would buy it).
They gave us a discount everywhere we went and were interested in us in a friendly way. I might just be naive. I know times are rough in Greece and even harder in off-season for Hania, but I've never met such geniune people on all my travels (and, as of now, I am well-travelled.)
Bucket list item accomplished: make friends with a person from a foreign country in a place where you aren't living. Check. Some day, I promise, I will buy one of Margarita's icons.
Margarita is a Greek-Australian woman of medium height and dark blond hair. She has one of those inviting smiles that makes you like her instantly, and she is an amazing artist, or writer of icons. If you ask her, she will tell you everything there is to know about icons, and you won't be bored for a second!
Margarita makes all of her icons from completely natural materials. The paint, for instance, is minerals mixed with egg yolk (or egg tempera for you artist geeks out there). It takes about a month to prepare the wood for painting.
We spent a delightful morning and a good part of the afternoon chatting with her in her shop, drinking coffee and raki, and petting her cat (who really liked Veronica and kept jumping on her lap). Raki is an excellent Grecian liquor that is also used for tacking the gold leaf on icons! Talk about ingenuity.
We bid Margarita and Bella (the cat) goodbye and headed to Tamam for a delish lunch of fried cold with a garlic puree sauce. Just as we were finishing our meal, the waiter came up to us and gave us dessert "on the house."
The people of Crete are some of the friendliest people I have met on my travels. Granted, we were some of the only tourists in town and so could enjoy personal time with the locals.
A few more examples, we stepped into a shop to look around and ended up buying olive wood things. The lady offered us some raki (probably hoping we would buy it).
They gave us a discount everywhere we went and were interested in us in a friendly way. I might just be naive. I know times are rough in Greece and even harder in off-season for Hania, but I've never met such geniune people on all my travels (and, as of now, I am well-travelled.)
Bucket list item accomplished: make friends with a person from a foreign country in a place where you aren't living. Check. Some day, I promise, I will buy one of Margarita's icons.
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